With My Tail Between My Legs

by Lloyd B. Abrams

Early in my sophomore year at SUNY Stony Brook, I discovered that I wasn’t the math genius I thought I was. The myth started when I got a perfect grade on one of Mr. Hertz’s seventh grade math tests that I’d finished in four minutes, and continued with 100s and near 100s on four New York State math regents and a high mathematics score on my SAT.

But when I walked into my first Calculus 3 unit exam on sets and arrays at Stony Brook, I had no idea what I was doing. I was way out of my league. I handed in my blank answer booklet, walked out of class, and across the quad to the administration building. In the registrar’s office, I dropped the Calc 3 class and changed my major from mathematics to psychology, mostly because a B.A. in psychology required only 25 psych credits – far fewer than any other major. That way, I could still graduate in four years.

And so, by simply signing the change form, waving my magic wand and commanding abracadabra! I was going to become a psychologist.

I was never an academic overachiever, so unlike my older brother Steve, the high school valedictorian and concert pianist. Although I was a top-ten-percent honor student, I rarely studied in high school. And my lackadaisical and witless work ethic hardly changed in college. My mediocre four-year 2.28 grade point average at Stony Brook got me accepted to only Wichita State University – yeah, frickin’ Kansas – and admitted to the graduate psychology program at Texas Tech College, long before it became a university, but only on a non-matriculated basis.

Just before my parents left Lubbock, Texas to drive back home, they warned me don’t you dare buy any car until you know where you stand! The next day I found a tiny Renault Dauphine for $500. Only a car could offer what I needed the most – freedom and independence.

I lived in a high-rise dormitory alongside hundreds of freshmen and underclassmen. I watched drugstore cowboys on Saturday nights courting their cowgirls. I got into a fistfight with an antisemitic redneck who was subsequently expelled. I smoked my first joint after remaining drug-abstinent at Stony Brook, of all places, except for using Dexedrine, an amphetamine, from samplers my pharmacist father had slipped me, for all-night cramming and paper-writing. Perhaps my best overall skill was, and still is, being able to rapidly assimilate and process information. And, during those days, being able to touch-type, mercifully aided by a miracle invention called Ko-rec-Type.

Day-to-day life in Lubbock was mostly dull although I had started counseling students in the college’s mental health clinic. And it was comforting to be able to stop at the all-night donut joint – the only place open 24 hours – and scarf down hot, oily donuts. I also had a short-lived relationship with a townie, an easy-going local girl. But I stopped dating her because she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – do anything about her chronic and unavoidable halitosis condition.

One afternoon, Lubbock police detectives met me after a class and brought me in for questioning about the grisly murder of a female custodian. It was a big case in 1967 and shocking news at the time. With my goatee, I evidently fit the general description of the perpetrator. I guess they had searched through the college’s ID card photos.

Our room was subsequently searched, but nothing incriminating – including some pot – was found. Most importantly, I had an airtight alibi, as did my freshman roommate, Randy. We had both attended a KTXT-FM staff meeting the previous evening – the evening in question – before I went on the air at midnight for my premier two-hour broadcast.

After four months of apathetic studying and aimlessness, and living as a stranger in a strange land in the armpit of the Bible Belt, I still ended up with three A’s and a B. But my grades alone were evidently not enough to earn matriculation status. Perhaps the psychology department decision makers thought I also hadn’t met other unspecified qualifications.

So, with my tail between my legs, and a vague sense of relief, I packed up all my belongings in several large cardboard boxes, and flew home on a Braniff redeye.

I took a taxi from Kennedy Airport to Jamaica, the Long Island Railroad out to Islip, and another taxi home.

When I unlocked the front door and walked unannounced into my parents’ bedroom early that morning I saw …

their shocked, dumbfounded looks

their faces morphing into disappointment, then sorrow

while I was suffused with anguish, anger and shame

and feeling so beaten down and exhausted …

I had to get some sleep

and my mother softened and said,

“Go to bed, Lloyd. We’ll talk about this later …

it’ll all work out.”

Rev 18 / Original September 3, 2023 .. October 18, 2023

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October 18, 2023 … Copyright © 2023, Lloyd B. Abrams